


Cherry

by nyctanthes



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, First Time, Friendship, Guilt, Mourning, Nancy Wheeler POV, Pining, Set between s1 and s2, Teenage Identity Crises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22815958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyctanthes/pseuds/nyctanthes
Summary: Nancy contains multitudes. None of them are big on apologies.
Relationships: Nancy Wheeler & Barb Holland, Nancy Wheeler/Jonathan Byers, Nancy Wheeler/Steve Harrington
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	Cherry

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Jancy Week 2019 on Tumblr, for the prompt "Firsts."

Her first time with Steve was what she expected. The main event nice, quite nice. Unsurprising. She, when you get right down to it, had orchestrated it. Lost her virginity in a controlled fashion, enough time and forethought to pass a brand new razor over her legs and underarms, to tidy up her bikini line, neglected since late August, and buy condoms of her own. Sixteen year old Nancy Wheeler left nothing important to chance.

She lay not tranquil, but confident; projected an ease she didn’t feel. As if every Thursday night she had sex for the first time. Shotgunned beers, partied with obnoxious shits like Tommy and Carol. Swam in a rich boy’s heated swimming pool and warmed up in his shower. Wore his sweatshirt, his boxers. Deliberately took them off while her wet clothes tumbled round and round a pristine dryer two echoing, cream and tan floors below. 

No blood, no pain. It was over before it started. It didn’t matter because this, whatever it was between them - too soon to name it, sixteen year old Nancy Wheeler looked before she leapt - had potential. She knew it. She wouldn’t have done it otherwise.

Maybe it would have lasted longer; maybe they would have fit better. If the secret self growing inside her, secret even from her, burst forth without warning. Exposed to unnatural heat, too-bright light and forced to bloom.

The hard edge of her guilt eventually softened; she stopped thinking like this ( _if only, what if, if only, what if_ ). Accepted that given time and less adversity - given Barb’s continued existence - the change would nevertheless have occurred. The seeds had been planted. Nature would take its course. She would always have become this new being: peeled and flayed, pink and tender, standing on wet, trembling legs, covered in a caul of afterbirth and squalling. Like a fawn - but no. She’ll never think of deer the same way again. Like a foal.

People thought she was chastened, she’d learned her lesson. She kept them at a distance because of graffiti at The Hawk, shame over her sluttish ways, relief that Steve took her back. Her best friend ran away, and she - selfishly, rationally, princessly - refused to go with her. Too late realized the consequences. Nothing to do but flagellate herself that she didn’t try harder to stop her, that she didn’t go with her to keep her safe. Everyone knew that sober, somber Barb Holland ("dreary"; "damp") would never last more than a couple of weeks by herself out there in the sad, mad, bad world.

Everybody assumed. Nobody empathized. Or asked. Why she was no longer the same sixteen year old Nancy Wheeler. Whether the change in her should give them pause. 

With the possible exception of Jonathan Byers. In class, after she said something sharp verging on waspish about Reagan or sheep people who believed the trash they were fed by the media and the government. After she pointed out that Russia wasn’t quaking in its boots over the U.S. - which by the way wasn’t destroying communism single-handed via the arms race and mutually assured destruction - she looked at him, discreetly. Nancy Wheeler, no matter her age and stage, played her cards close to the vest. Everyone else’s mouths prissed. They muttered. 

“Not this again. Give it a rest.”

“If that stick was wedged any further up your butt, Wheeler, your brain would be Swiss cheese.”  


“Turned into a Commie lover, I see. Why don’t you do us a favor and move there. Since you like them so much.”  


Steve agreed with them but came to her defense. In class. “She has a point. And she’s way smarter than you, so you should listen to her.“ In the halls. “She’s not as serious as she looks. If you know what I mean.”

She forced her lips to curve up and quashed her first instinct: to bare her teeth.

When she snuck a peek at Jonathan, one of her eyebrows sardonically raised, or perhaps one of them squinched low, the other arched in confusion - striking an ironic pose took practice, and she was only halfway there - he smiled. Not an actual smile, with his mouth, but an underground smile. A smile that didn’t look like one. A smile you had to know him to see.

Maybe it was the eyes. Maybe it was the shoulders, had nothing to do with his face. A different set to them. They gave her the dizzying sensation he was moving closer, although he sat four rows back and four seats to her left. Nancy Wheeler was no longer a front row person, but the second row, three chairs off-center, was no slouch seat. Anything further from the teacher and she might as well skip class.

Jonathan, of course, was wedged in a corner, with his back to the wall and a direct view of the classroom door.

The feeling that not-a-smile gave her. Like he was running those long, sensitive fingers along her jaw and down her neck, pausing to silently ask permission before dipping them under her shirt, over her bra. He cupped her breast, circled her areola with his thumb until her nipple hardened. Her eyes fluttered shut. She breathed _Jonathan_ and swayed closer. He bent his head and, under her shirt over her bra, flicked his tongue across it - teasing, insistent. Only when she grabbed his hair, held his head in place did he relent and take it in his mouth. Relent and fluff up her skirt, spread a warm hand on the back of her thigh, fingers curled, reaching close to where she was.

She might have been projecting _that_ , but she didn’t think she imagined the rest. That he understood. Why she was no longer Nancy That Was. (Trying to fit in. Trying to get over it. Trying to be a big girl.) Why she was Nancy Who Is. (Taking charge. Speaking her mind. Looking at the big picture.) Why she was on her way to becoming Nancy Who Will. (Do what with this newfound power? She didn’t yet know, but she wasn’t overly concerned. She would figure it out. She always did.)

His comprehension was gratifying. It was intriguing. It was irresistible.

Mom suggested a weekend of lunch and shopping in Indianapolis. 

“Ok,” she said. “Sure, that sounds great.” 

She didn’t need comforting; not the kind of comforting that retail therapy brought. But Nancy Who Is tried hard to be a better daughter.

She went with an open heart and low expectations. Despite her best intentions, acted passive aggressive. Contrary and cliched. She sighed and spoke in monosyllables; picked at her lunch. Opted for bruise colored nail polish and vampire red lips; makeup that would give her smoky, smudged eyes and a chalky face. 

“You’ll look like a corpse,” Mom said, unthinkingly, and immediately had to take it back.

She bought T-shirts of bands she’d heard of but never listened to, had only a tepid desire to check out. Added to her hoard black tights, thick soled lace up boots and a handful of short black skirts: skinny, schoolgirl and scuba **.** If nothing else, they covered her ass.

“Channeling Byers now,” Steve joked. Secure that she was not; or worried that she was but too repentant, too kind and forgiving of her foibles to say anything more pointed. They had a detente, fragile as her parents’ bone-china wedding set, dusty and locked behind glass. 

“I’m in mourning,” she snapped. Unsure, as she said it, if she was telling the truth. _Was_ she still in mourning? If she was, would it manifest like this?

“Barb always liked this look, but never felt comfortable enough to pull it off.”

A momentary twinge of guilt, of shame that she was laying responsibility for this (”baffling”; “borderline”; “bitchy”) behavior at Barb’s feet. Barb, owner of two pairs of bluchers, for god’s sake. Sincere reader of _The Preppy Handbook_ , dreaming of the Seven Sisters and how she’d learn to sail, if ever presented with the opportunity to summer by the ocean.

The bad feelings passed. If Barb had been given more time, if she’d given Barb more time, who knows the person she would have become. In fundamental ways people remained the same. In other ways they changed so they were barely recognizable. To her, to themselves. Ask them who they are, who they were, who they were becoming and they'd open their mouths with confidence, then pause. Frown.  The changes didn’t have to be dramatic and showy: shopping at the hunting supply store instead of Fashion Bug, wielding a pistol instead of a hair dryer, using a dull kitchen knife to bisect lifeline and heart-line rather than, well, anything else. Even the subtle changes - how someone looked completely different in the red light of the darkroom, when he was in his element, concentrating on something essential to him, paying her no mind - allowed her to see the parts of a person that previously weren’t at the forefront, that previously she had blithely ignored. 

She pictured Barb in college, smoking clove cigarettes and engaging in heated discussions about Andrea Dworkin. Barb would have declared that sharing classes with the boys would inevitably lead - like the sun rises in the east, like water is wet - to women’s voices being silenced. Worn dark, functional turtleneck sweaters but more fashionable glasses. Dyed her hair black or a truly dramatic shade: auburn or eggplant. Not because it did anything so retrograde as make her look good, but because she needed a change and the color reflected her true self.

The new, sweet style of Nancy Who Is lasted approximately thirty-three days. She had to repeat outfits too frequently for comfort. (No matter what age or stage, two weeks before repeating an outfit was a constant.) She tired of the comments. (”Batshit”; “Round the bend”; “Hey, baby.”) The clothes, to be honest, didn’t suit her. The boots had too many laces. (The boots were ugly as sin.)

And Jonathan didn’t react the way she expected. Only, when he saw her, looked confused. Stuffed his hands in his pockets and mimed a forehead wrinkle. Compressed his face though she couldn’t say with certainty that any movement of his facial muscles actually occurred. Like he was thinking something, but what he couldn’t say. It wasn’t anything he could put words to.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're looking for more fic from me that features Jonathan and Nancy, I've started a WIP: multi-chapter, canon divergent AU, post S2. It's on Tumblr: "The Future's Not Ours." You can find it [here.](https://the-futures-not-ours.tumblr.com/chapters)
> 
> It will probably make it to Ao3 when it's complete. The exact date...TBD.


End file.
